


mom, would you wash my back? this once, and then we can forget

by MakeMeBurn



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Hiram is released before Fred is shot, it's season one but I messed with the timeline, its about.....the complicated mother-daughter relationship, veronica introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:55:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28482747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeMeBurn/pseuds/MakeMeBurn
Summary: veronica wants to save her mom and her friends and eventually Riverdale
Relationships: Archie Andrews & Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones & Veronica Lodge





	mom, would you wash my back? this once, and then we can forget

Why do people fight for things that just keep hurting them? 

This was something Veronica Lodge pondered every time one of her friends got hurt by this awful town and its horrible systems. Every time Betty’s mom screamed at her for something that wasn’t really her fault (it was because of something that happened on the other end of the town 20 or so years ago that she never really figured out how to deal with). Every time Archie was thrown around and beaten down and tricked because he was just trying to figure out his purpose, what he was supposed to be doing (he was just supposed to be a kid, but this town didn’t have the time or the patience for that). Every time Jughead looked impossibly tired at the prospect of coming home to his dad another day and having to guess whether or not his trailer was safe for him that night (it never really was; no one was ever safe here and Jughead understood that more than any of them). 

Why do people fight for things that just keep hurting them?

This was something Veronica Lodge scrambled frantically to understand while she was crying, begging her mom to not let Hiram come back (he used to be Daddy— now he was Hiram; this wasn’t something Veronica mourned extremely deeply). Veronica could tell her mom was scared of him. She could sense this for as long as she could remember. Now she could see it in her mom’s hesitance to pick up the phone from his lawyer. In the empty bottles of merlot in their trash. In her late nights spent watching out the window for something to come get her (and hurt her). 

Veronica stayed up with her sometimes. She repeated that she shouldn’t have to be scared. They wouldn’t have to be scared if they left or hid or ran from him. She could protect her mother. She promised she would. 

Hermione Lodge was a proud woman and would never admit to how absolutely terrified she was in every waking moment. She would like to say that Hiram now is not the same man she married, but that would be a lie. The first chain of pearls he clasped around her neck wasn’t his gift— it was her surrender. He had big ideas and gradually deepening pockets. She watched her mother struggle to make ends meet, cleaning hotel rooms and taking any other odd job around town. Hermione knew what it was like to want to help her mother more than anything. She thought that her and Hiram could make her mother comfortable. She thought that she could love Hiram. Hermione Gomez should have listened to her mother. Hermione Lodge hadn’t seen her mother in more than ten years. 

Hermione didn’t want the same thing to happen to her daughter. Veronica shouldn’t have to be scared. She shouldn’t have to give herself and her everything to a man that could turn on her at any second. She wanted Veronica to keep believing in angels and focus on school. She wanted Veronica to stay this small so she could fold her up very neatly and put her somewhere she would be warm and safe. She had this thought for the first time when Veronica was two-years-old and looking up at Hermione like she hung the stars in the sky. 

_ It’s dark Mommy, can you stay for a little longer?  _

But Hermione didn’t know how to stop the cycle, and she couldn’t do anything meaningful while still frozen by a man who couldn’t even see her from behind bars. 

So she drank. She smoked too much behind the Five Seasons, sharing a light with Smithers. She hoarded every scrap of money she earned at Pop’s in an envelope in a secret compartment in her dresser. Maybe one day it would amount to something and her and Veronica might actually have something of their own. More likely, Hiram would find it and laugh at it, because nothing she ever did could actually threaten to hurt him. He was untouchable. 

Veronica didn’t know about the envelope. Veronica knew about the smoking and the drinking. Veronica was fifteen-years-old and she thought she could save her mother. But she was still a kid (a young woman actually, she liked to remind anyone who said otherwise) so she went to school and ate cafeteria food for the first time in her life. She got caught up in Betty’s schemes and the town’s mystery and ended up involved in the ameteur investigation into the death of Jason Blossom. She earned her place in front of the murder board. She eyed her father’s name scrawled in Jughead’s messy print on an index card, connected to other clues by multiple pieces of red yarn. 

(She wishes he did it. If he killed the teenage son of the most powerful family in town, he would be buried. Either by the Blossoms or the justice system. He wouldn’t be their problem anymore. Maybe Riverdale could do this one thing for her.)

Veronica had sleepovers with Betty every weekend. She taught Betty how to braid and told her she was beautiful and Betty believed her because Veronica meant it. Betty stopped glancing out her window across the street. Then, she closed the curtains altogether, leaving them completely and totally alone. They slept in the same bed at night. Veronica thought that she would think into this a little more if she could spare the time. 

She couldn’t though. And she didn’t want to promise Betty something that she couldn’t deliver. 

Veronica truly loved her friends. Her friends loved Riverdale no matter what it did to them. It was their home, and Veronica could respect that. But she had only been here for a couple months and it wasn’t really her home. Her mom was her home, and she didn’t want to let this town ruin either of them. She wanted to go very far away and never think about Riverdale or her father again. 

Despite this, she had not yet been able to convince her mother to pack a bag and leave pillows in the shape of her body under the blankets to buy them time. So Veronica stayed in Riverdale. She participated. She worked to solve a murder. During their lunch period, Veronica was involved in conversations about partial fingerprints, possible motives, and the bloated corpse of a dead teenager. After school, they nagged cops and broke into private property in search of any and every lead. 

Veronica found she liked sneaking around. She also found that she felt bad for Jason Blossom. He was scared of his father and wanted desperately to protect what he loved. This was something she could relate to. 

She also felt bad for Cheryl and Polly, who got left behind. Also Archie, who looked up to Jason like a big brother and trusted him. Also Betty who was screaming and clawing at this case, despite the fact that those in power wouldn’t listen (Veronica thought that this probably wasn’t the first time no one would listen to Betty, and it might not be the last). Also Jughead, who wanted to solve the murder but got cagey if he had to talk about Jason.

Her friends were so strange and so sad and she fell in love with them. What she once thought was stupidity she now saw was loyalty. They loved Riverdale. They wanted to save it even if it wouldn’t save them. 

Some nights, when Veronica couldn’t sleep, she thought about Riverdale in this new light. This town, this extremely difficult town, was the place that made her mother. It was the place that her mother brought her back to as soon as she had the chance. Riverdale let them come in and held them very tightly and asked uncomfortable questions and offered no answers. Maybe it wasn’t Riverdale’s fault that unbalanced marriages started here and teenagers were shot in the head and laid in the river here. Maybe Riverdale was worth saving. 

On those nights, Hermione read and occasionally let her gaze drift to Veronica’s bedroom door (she thought about how Veronica slept with the door shut in New York, but not here). She mulled over the past couple of weeks when Veronica had been staying late at the diner and barely keeping secrets. She had been quizzing Hermione incessantly about the Blossoms, despite her mother begging her to leave it alone. It wasn’t Veronica’s fault, she didn’t know what wound she was digging into. 

Veronica was happy in the strange way that she tended to be. When this was the case, Hermione tended to consider all of the ways in which Veronica was like her father (and how much it scared her). Veronica shared so much with the Hiram she first met in history class at Riverdale High. She had big ideas and a smile that let her get away with more than was probably safe. Hermione hoped she would use it for good. She knew that she would— Veronica was smarter than Hiram ever was. 

Sometimes, Veronica felt like they weren’t getting anywhere with Jason Blossom’s death. Like his body might just lay in the ground forever without anyone knowing what really happened. With his killer walking among them. With a gun that did the deed locked in a cupboard somewhere. 

Around the time when these feelings peaked within her little group of friends, she had to decide whether to testify on her father’s behalf. She thought it was simple. She didn’t want to help him in any way. She wanted no hand in humanizing him. 

Then she got that letter; he threatened her mother. Veronica knew her mom was scared but this was proof that he could and would hurt her. She had to do something she didn’t want to do in the interest of saving someone who wouldn’t save herself. 

Her mom was just scared, Veronica had to remind herself. This fact wasn’t easy to forget, but it was easy to misunderstand. 

Veronica agreed to testify as a character witness and didn’t think about it for a while and she and her friends worked harder to find some connection, to find some way to arrange the clues that gave them an answer. More index cards went up on the board. Some of them featured Veronica’s neat cursive. She helped proof-read Jughead and Betty’s expose for the Blue and Gold. They all hoped this would draw something (or someone) out of hiding. 

She went to Jughead’s birthday party and tried to not take sides in the very complicated battle Betty and Jughead were waging against each other. She sang with Archie at homecoming. He was really bad but he loved it so much and she wanted him to be able to do anything he loved. Later that night, she saw Jughead learn that his father had been arrested. His face broke her heart (is that what her face looked like when she heard about Hiram’s arrest?). She sat next to him on a bench at the police station when Archie and Betty had to leave to shower and reassure their parents they were safe. 

Then, they found the video on a little thumb drive. Veronica thought she had never cried harder in her entire life. Jason ran from the thing that hurt him, but he got found and he got caught and he got killed. Veronica sobbed long after they turned the video off, and on the entire ride to the police department to deliver the evidence. Betty held her hand. Archie put his hand on her shoulder. Jughead let her wear his jacket when she started shivering.

Clifford Blossom killed himself in a dark barn and before they knew it, other loose ends started tying themselves up. Jughead’s dad was cleared of murder charges. Betty confided in her that she thought her mom might be more human than she previously understood. Archie still avoided the music room. That would take longer to heal. 

They drank milkshakes and laughed and dismantled the murder board late into the night. They saved Cheryl. They saved Riverdale. Maybe they could all save each other. 

Then, she came home. She saw her father sitting at the head of the table and her mom a few seats away regarding him nervously. 

Maybe they would have to. 

**Author's Note:**

> veronica lodge i luv u so much


End file.
